{"id":45980,"date":"2023-11-15T15:29:04","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T22:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=45980"},"modified":"2023-11-15T15:29:15","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T22:29:15","slug":"like-a-fiery-meteor-the-life-of-joseph-f-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2023\/11\/like-a-fiery-meteor-the-life-of-joseph-f-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith: A Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph F. Smith (1838\u20131917) is a towering figure in Latter-day Saint history, so I have waited and hoped for an academically rigorous biography about him for years. Stephen C Taysom delivered on that hope this year in <\/span>Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith<\/span><\/i><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The flavor of Taysom\u2019s work reminded me of John G. Turner\u2019s <\/span>Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet<\/span><\/i>\u2014a thoroughly researched biographical work that places a prophet-president in his context. Like Turner, Taysom\u2019s work reveals the complexities of Joseph F. Smith as a person, allowing readers to get to know Joseph F. Smith more intimately. At times, the story takes a shocking turn, such as discussion of Joseph F. Smith\u2019s violent tendencies or his lying about the performances of post-manifesto plural marriages. Even while showing Joseph F. at his worst, however, Taysom does contextualize Smith\u2019s actions in a way that makes sense of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taysom\u2019s biography of Joseph F. Smith is very different from previous biographies about Smith. Francis M. Gibbons\u2019 <\/span>Joseph F. Smith: Patriarch and Preacher, Prophet of God<\/span><\/i> is hagiographic to the point that a bullet list of life events and accomplishments would be about as useful for getting to know Joseph F. Smith. (To be honest, I struggled to get through Gibbons\u2019 work because of how overly hagiographic it was, even though it\u2019s relatively short.) <\/span>The Life of Joseph F. Smith<\/span><\/i> by Joseph Fielding Smith is valuable for the access it had to both primary sources and memories of the subject, but it is also the effort of a son and church leader to put his father and ecclesiastical predecessor in the best light possible. <\/span>Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith\u2014<\/span><\/i>the official church manual from around 2000\u2014is a great collection of his teachings, but the history sections provide an inaccurate view of Joseph F. Smith, especially when it comes to his temper. <\/span>Like a Fiery Meteor<\/span><\/i> is of a different mold altogether and shows a different person because of its relatively objective approach.<\/span><\/p>\n

Something that could have strengthened <\/span>Like a Fiery Meteor<\/span><\/i> was to not overstate the importance of Joseph F. Smith. President Smith is extremely important, but occasionally statements were made that shortsold the contributions of other, earlier Church leaders in an effort to hype up Joseph F. Smith. For example, Taysom states that: \u201cSince Joseph Smith had introduced the concept [of proxy temple work] in the 1840s, it had struggled to find a champion, someone who possessed a passion for the work of the temple as well as a capacity for doctrinal thinking that could place proxy temple work within the larger whole of Mormon belief and practice\u201d (357). This completely overlooks the role of Orson Pratt and Wilford Woodruff doing those exact things. Orson Pratt was one of the earliest individuals in the Church to systematically trace out his ancestors and to make sure that proxy baptisms were performed for them. He also oversaw the addition of many of the most important temple-related texts from Joseph Smith to the Doctrine and Covenants. Wilford Woodruff played a huge role in codifying temple rites and administration and for shifting the Latter-day Saint views towards performing proxy work to create a family-centric (rather than Church-centric) afterlife with his 1894 revelation. <\/span>Many of the ideas that Joseph F. Smith articulated in his vision that is now D&C 138 had previously been expressed by Wilford Woodruff<\/span><\/a>. Thus, on a couple of occasions Taysom was prone to overstate the contributions of Joseph F. Smith.<\/span><\/p>\n

That concern aside, the book offers a lot of interesting and insightful discussion about Joseph F. Smith\u2019s life and contributions to the faith. One area of discussion that I found particularly interesting was Joseph F. Smith\u2019s role in establishing doctrine and interpretation of scriptures in the Church. In a lot of discussions outside of Taysom\u2019s work, Joseph F. has tended to be overshadowed by James E. Talmage and B. H. Roberts as a notable Latter-day Saint theologian during his time and by his son, Joseph Fielding Smith, after his time. What Tayson points out is that Joseph Fielding Smith was largely trained by his father in how he interpreted scripture and doctrine. Before either Talmage or Roberts published notable works, Joseph F. was to go-to church leader to settle doctrinal debates, and his time as president of the Church allowed him to normalize his views and approaches. Joseph Fielding Smith\u2019s efforts to answer letters in print seems to have been modeled on his father\u2019s work. Taysom does a great job of highlighting how deeply our belief system was impacted by Joseph F. Smith.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the first academic biography of Joseph F. Smith, Stephen C Taysom\u2019s <\/span>Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith<\/span><\/i><\/a> is an important and long-overdue contribution to Latter-day Saint history.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph F. Smith (1838\u20131917) is a towering figure in Latter-day Saint history, so I have waited and hoped for an academically rigorous biography about him for years. Stephen C Taysom delivered on that hope this year in Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":45981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2934,52,2970],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-20th-century-history","category-book-reviews","category-church-leadership-and-policies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/9781647691288.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45983,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45980\/revisions\/45983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}